Clarion Call of the Cardinal
A lesson in history, hope and hallowed ground
My son, Erland, lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and three daughters. He's in the music business, a singer-songwriter that wears multiple hats including helping underprivileged youth receive music lessons, instruments and recording knowledge. He also has a boutique label developing talent that has drawn the attention of major labels. He writes songs and co-writes with others. He's nonstop, always in motion, always dreaming, always creating and now in the prime of his life, he's doing the work he's meant to do. He discovered saunas as a way to relax, to let go as his body sweats out toxins and his muscles warm and stretch easily. He found the 45 minute sessions of infrared heat was a good time to meditate. He's been going to an infrared sauna salon in the hip 12 South neighborhood minutes from his house. When Annie and I visited over Easter he took me with him.
Because of Covid, cancer, cost and concern for health challenges while traveling, we hadn't seen our three granddaughters for over a year. This four day trip to Nashville would make up for lost time. The weather was cold and rainy for the first three days and then Easter Sunday we awoke to a brilliant blue sky. Outside our bedroom window a red bird I later learned was a Northern Cardinal, sang loudly from the perch of a bird feeder hanging from the branch of a willow tree, it's leaves wrapped tightly within its buds, nudging forth from their winter nap.The color of the bird was so vibrant that I called out to Annie to hurry to the window and marvel at the eternal beauty of nature. After breakfast I sat in the sun on their back porch with a cup of coffee and felt my core begin to warm after a long, snowy winter in Central Oregon. My buds began to unfurl and I did my own silent singing.
My son and his family live in Nashville where less than three weeks ago a mentally disturbed person shot and killed three nine-year olds and three adults at a private school a short driving distance from their house. My youngest granddaughter had played soccer against one of the children that was killed. There is a heaviness here that lingers about the senseless killing that happened in their world and pierced their sense of safety, leaving a communal grief to hang below the dark clouds. Red ribbons tied to mailboxes and lawn signs in the neighborhood was as a reminder to never forget.
We arrived for our sauna appointment right on time. Erland booked the deluxe room large enough for two people. The rest of the rooms are all singles. There are infrared panels built into the cedar-lined walls, as is an iPad that can access music playlists, the internet and thermostat controls, although it was set to the maximum of 140 degrees and we didn't reduce it. The hot, dry air filled our lungs and the detox sweat begin to emerge from our pores as we followed a guided meditation Erland had saved to his iPhone. We went twice over the four days of our trip. The hot box in a dark room with only blue pin lights from the ceiling and the illumination of the iPad screen was like a subterranean place of worship, eliciting deep, honest conversation about life and death between a father and son.
While we were gone Annie and the girls began metal detecting on the Civil War battlefield across the street from the house. Annie has had a secret desire for a metal detector ever since we watched The Detectorists on PBS, a three season British import that draws you in with a quiet yet wicked sense of humor following a pair of metal detecting hobbyists in a small, rural town with the local pub, community hall and beautiful countryside as a backdrop. The goal of finding a Viking horde is a metaphor for finding treasure in our own, simple lives. We gave our middle granddaughter a detector for her last birthday, and even though it was more of a Volkswagen than a Range Rover, they discovered it worked quite well and got consistent hits as they walked and swept the detecter side to side in front of them.
There is a creek that runs through the park directly across from their house. The neighborhood historian explained to us that the Confederate soldiers encamped on one side and the Union soldiers on the other. In the evening they would gather at the creek to trade coffee for tobacco, and paper and pens to write letters home. In the morning they would go back to killing each other. He pointed out the berms still visible where the soldiers would dig trenches and pile dirt in front of them, now covered in grass and barely perceptible. Our historian disappeared into his house and returned with a glass display box with six Civil War bullets he recovered from his backyard next to the battlefield.
Annie and our granddaughters didn't find any bullets. But they did find plenty of pieces of scrap metal and one interesting piece of crushed lead with what appeared to be marks made by someone, and perhaps a name carved in it. We showed the historian and he thought it could be a piece of trench art, a way a soldier passed the time in the trenches while waiting for the next skirmish, or it could simply be a piece of household pipe with etchings from a cinch band. Regardless, it was hours of creative exploration, with the potential of treasure underfoot, or at least in their hearts, a lesson in history, conflict, death and the passage of time.
After they cleaned up the pieces they found and competing internet searches on dueling iPhones, we all took our best guesses of what they could be. What we were left with was the realization that these small artifacts maybe fragments of memories from a battlefield over 158 years ago. Generations have passed since the battle where brother fought against brother on the ground across from my son's house. The geography of grief has faded and is left to historians and girls and grandmothers with a toy metal detecter to contemplate. I wonder if the cardinal sang as loudly from the branches of the riparian trees by the creek in the morning light before the quiet was interrupted by gunfire and battle cries? I wonder if the little red bird sang as loudly on the morning of the school shooting and the world just didn't hear it's beauty?
On Easter Sunday, the cardinal outside the window sang loud and bright with all his heart as the weather passed and the sun came out again. We returned home the next morning to Oregon in time for my immunotherapy treatment to fight the battle with cancer within me.
